Green light for IUCN Green List of Protected Areas

09 September 2012 | International news release

Jeju Island, Republic of Korea, 9 September 2012 (IUCN) – With several pilot projects underway, preparations for IUCN’s Green List of Well-Managed Protected areas are gathering pace prior to its official launch at the next IUCN World Parks Congress to be held in Australia in 2014.

The IUCN Green List will celebrate protected area successes, acting as a benchmark for progress towards effective and equitable management and rewarding innovation, excellence and enterprise. Protected areas wishing to be included on the IUCN Green List will have to satisfy a threshold of agreed criteria, including meeting their conservation goals, achieving effective management and facilitating equitable governance.

“The IUCN Green List will make a valuable contribution to the more effective conservation of protected areas,” says Trevor Sandwith, Director of IUCN’s Global Protected Areas Programme, which is overseeing the initiative in partnership with the World Commission on Protected Areas. “The Green List will serve as a powerful motivator, inspiring protected areas to meet the standards and be shining examples of global best practice.”

Some of the advantages of inscription on the IUCN Green List will be greater international recognition for the protected area, increased political support, interest in quality tourism and stronger motivation among managers and other staff.

The initiative is currently being tested through projects with Parques Nacionales Naturales in Colombia, the Korean National Parks Service and CA/TS (Conservation Assured/Tiger Standards), a WWF-managed tiger conservation programme in tiger range states.

“I decided to accept the generous invitation for Colombia to be one of the countries in which this innovative initiative is developed because I find it extremely useful for our country to determine which national parks are doing a good job related to all issues on the management effectiveness of protected areas,” says Julia Miranda Londoño, Director of Parques Nacionales Naturales Colombia. “Sharing good practices is a very good way to raise the standards of management of the protected areas, which in the end will result in better nature conservation in Colombia.”

The IUCN Green List will also assist national governments and their conservation partners to meet their goals under the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Aichi Targets, particularly Target 11, which states that by 2020 at least 17% of the world’s terrestrial areas and 10% of marine areas should be effectively and equitably managed and conserved.